Traditionally, intelligent stacking technology for distributed traffic capture devices brings scalability, speed and fault tolerance to centralized network monitoring. Network traffic captured in distributed way requires a scalable centralized layer between network infrastructure and analytical equipment. This architecture creates a single logical traffic capture layer that automatically discovers and routes traffic to the designated monitoring tool via the highest-speed link and the lowest number of hops, changing the path as needed in event of link failure or reconfiguration.
Traditional network architectures, traditionally integrate both the forwarding (data) and the control planes in the same box (network element). In some known software-defined networking architectures, the network decouples these two planes and executes the control plane in a centralized element, such as a server that might be in different physical locations from the forwarding elements (switches). The use of a centralized architecture in a network enables the simplification of the switches implementing the forwarding plane and shifts the intelligence of the network into a number of controllers that oversee the switches. The challenge of such an architecture is mixing those new elements with advanced systems that possess greater capabilities than the simple forwarding elements and with legacy systems that support only a single approach to populating the forwarding (and filtering) database.
It is, therefore, desirable to configure and manage hybrid communication network which integrates both distributed and split network architectures.